I Could Be Wrong, But...
Was $14,345.95— |
|
|
We're All Going to Die!
©2009 David Boyne
"I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying."
—Woody Allen
I could be wrong, but in my mind, the summation of “humankind’s predicament,” and the root of all philosophies and religions, whether East or West, is eloquently delivered by a certain stock character found in science fiction B Movies from the 1950s and 60s.
The moment comes early in the movie, when that minor character, usually played by a nervous, continually complaining skinny guy, or a nervous, continually complaining fat guy—suddenly realizes that the storyline includes a homicidal zombie mummy vampire, or a giant bug-like alien, or an implacable man-eating plant.
He does a lightning-fast calculation and screams the result, “We’re all going to die!”
Having thus served to remind us of the one thing we all have in common, whether we are in the cast or in the audience, he makes his exit —being drained of his O-negative before being ripped to pieces by the zombie mummy vampire, or abducted, eviscerated and impregnated by the giant bug-like alien, or swallowed whole by the carnivorous plant.
I cannot think of anything to add, subtract, multiply or divide in the doomed man’s equation. Try as we might, reality, whether we see it or not, is irrefutable. E=MC2, and we are all going to die.
All of this has next to nothing to do with what follows. I’ve included it only because for years I have wanted to write an essay with the screaming title, We’re All Going To Die! Now I have. Consider this a reminder; a wake-up call; a Public Service Announcement akin to the anxiety-inducing, stern male voice that would suddenly come out of the television when I was 7 and watching black-and-white science-fiction movies, “It’s ten o’clock. Do you know where you’re children are?”
Which brings me to here.
Recently, while riding my bicycle, I experienced a sudden failure to remain perpendicularly tangential to the gutter.
That is, I crashed my bike on the side of a busy road.
But don’t ask me how. Like so many of Life’s transformative events, it happened so fast! One moment I was skimming the road surface at 12 miles per hour, singing my standard gosh-I-feel-good-song, If I Only Had a Brain, and enjoying the abundant Southern California sunshine warming my bare arms and legs and face. The next moment, the right side of my body was being banged onto the pavement, as if an invisible hand wielding an invisible spatula had flipped me up and smacked me down.
While many who have known me have long predicted my fall into the gutter, no one had foreseen that I would manage the trick from a sudden and complete failure to control a bicycle. All my life people have underestimated me.
About the crash.
I have heard accounts of people who have been stabbed or shot or battered but feel no pain and continue to fight, to run, or to lift cars off of screaming toddlers pinned beneath. Yet, when I hit the pavement, pain shot into my body like a high-voltage electric current, and the switch was stuck in the On position. All I could manage to do was to hobble around and around in a tight little circle while wincingly reciting the universal male mantra for acceptance and healing, “Shit! Fuck! Shit!”
When I was back home, lying on the sofa, pressing against my knee, thigh, and butt, plastic bags filled with ten pounds of ice cubes serendipitously left over from a recent party, I performed a quick inventory of gratitude.
I was grateful for ice. All ice. The ice in the plastic bags pressed against my side, and the ice in the polar caps keeping the Atlantic coast from being in Ohio.
I was grateful that, although I had been travelling on a busy road when I fell, I had not been run over by a behemoth two-ton vehicle piloted by a mom programming the GPS while ordering pizza on her cell phone while admonishing two-thirds of the fifth-grade girls soccer team to shut up and watch their television monitors so she could hear herself talk.
I was grateful that all my bones were unbroken; my cranium was uncracked; my face remained unimproved by asphalt-dermabrasion. True, most of the skin that had covered my right shin had been grated off by my bouncing along the road. And true, the pink skin from my ripped-up knee, along my flank, and up to my butt now displayed a politically correct rainbow of black-yellow-red contusions.
Yet, as the ten pounds of ice chilled down my pain, I felt a profound gratitude for having managed to NOT join the one minority group that all people, regardless of race, creed, or color, can suddenly find themselves card-carrying members of: the disabled.
For two hours, I lie on the couch wishing rewind buttons worked on people, not just machines. And recalling the dumb joke: “The (insert targeted racial or ethnic group) are so dumb they lost the formula for ice!” And, trying to piece together the plot points in a story by Tolstoy that I had read long ago and far away while in the throes of teenage nihilism, The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
Whether accurate or not, I recalled that Ivan Ilyich had lived his life rapt by materialism and social jockeying. Then, while Ivan Ilyich was happily hanging curtains in his new, Make The Joneses Writhe In Envy Home, he fell. He bumped his side. (A much milder version of how I had fallen, from my bike, and bumped my side.)
Life went on for Ivan Ilyich. (And for me.)
But. (But.)
As the days passed, Ivan Ilyich began to feel increasingly intense pain from the injury to his side. (Perhaps he had lost the formula for ice?) He behaved toward his wife and family as even more of a flaming asshole than he was before the fall. Soon, it was apparent to everyone, including Ivan, he was dying. He knew it, yet he could not understand it, could not accept it. Why all the pain? What was the point? As death closed down, Ivan Ilyich realized he had lived only for himself, without compassion or contribution to others. Tolstoy, having neatly delivered the moral of the story, takes away Ivan Ilyich’s pain, allowing him to find peace, deep down inside (the only place it exists). Then Tolstoy snuffs the bastard.
Which brings me to here.
It has been a few weeks since I crashed my bike. There is fresh, new, bright pink skin on my right shin. There is a fresh, new, bright pink patch of scar tissue covering my knee. And there is also a fresh, new, whomping big lump on my upper thigh. Upon seeing this whomping big lump on my upper thigh my general practitioner doctor said, “Whoa. I’ve never seen anything like that before.” He then wondered aloud if it could be some kind of hematoma, and then wondered aloud if it could have been a hematoma, but had somehow morphed into a cyst. He then wondered what could be inside such a whomping big lump. He then gave up wondering and referred me to an orthopedist.
As I’ve manage the pain in my leg while waiting for an appointment with the orthopedist, it has occurred to me that Tolstoy meant for Ivan Ilyich’s story to dramatize two facts about Life. Fact One: We’re all going to die! Fact Two: It happens so fast!
One moment we’re driving our family in our car, the next moment we’re the sole survivor waking from a three-week coma induced by a drunken driver who crossed the median of the freeway to smash into us. One moment we’re walking down the road in Afghanistan carrying 70 pounds of weaponry and warmongering gear, the next moment were taking our first tentative steps on a treadmill, trying out our new prosthetic legs. One moment we’re riding our bike to meet some friends for a long ride, the next moment we’re lying in the gutter of the road, and the next moment were inside an MRI tube. One moment we’re sitting at our desk in our office, and the next moment we’re lying on the floor with Dennis from Accounts Receivable, a guy we never liked, beating on our chest and doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on us.
And the next moment we’re dead.
Of course, there is the slight, statistically insignificant chance that I could be wrong, but I suspect the truth is, we are never, ever, in control. Of anything. But we need to pretend we are. Without our delusion of being in control, we are stunned motionless. But, made brave by our delusion of being in control, unto the breach we charge, again and again, refusing to accept that every moment of living we are in free fall.
Share on Facebook
Click this link to BackTalk db!
David Boyne's
Inner Child
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|